The present invention relates generally to wireless receivers, and more particularly to controlling power consumption of a wireless receiver based on performance requirements and current operating conditions.
Wireless receivers are designed to receive and process wireless signals so that the receiver meets the performance requirements, e.g., bit error rate, data rate, etc., defined by a controlling communication standard and associated with a known range of operating conditions. When a wireless receiver has a fixed design (e.g., is designed with fixed parameters), the receiver may be designed to accommodate the worst-case operating condition to ensure that the performance requirements are met for all operating conditions. For example, the receiver may be designed to meet a bit error rate requirement under a worst-case operating condition, i.e., when an out-of-band blocking signal strongly interferes with an in-band desired signal. Because worst-case operating conditions rarely occur, a receiver with a fixed design wastes power when the operating condition is better than the worst case.
Alternatively, a wireless receiver may have a dynamic design (e.g., may be designed with dynamically adjustable parameters). U.S. Pat. No. 7,010,330, for example, describes dynamically modifying the gain, bias points, or impedance level of a circuit element in a receiver depending on the quality of a received signal. For example, if the received signal has good quality, the receiver gain may be reduced to reduce the overall power consumption of the receiver. If the received signal has poor signal quality, the receiver gain may be increased to provide the desired performance at the expense of higher power consumption.